Mom injured in Port-a-Potty explosion: 'It hurt'

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BEAVERTON -- A day after getting hurt by an explosion in a portable restroom, Karikaye Finch and her family were back on the sidelines cheering for their daughter's softball team.

The family is from Spokane and is only in town for a few days to see their daughter, Makinsey, play in a high school softball tournament.

Karikaye took a quick bathroom break during Saturday's game at Arnold Park in Alola when she was injured by an explosion in a port-a-potty.

"It was horrible," said Finch, who was rushed to the emergency room after a device similar to a water bottle exploded from inside the toilet itself and slammed into the back of her head. "It hurt. It made me mad, mostly."

"It felt like somebody was punching the back of your head," she told KATU in an exclusive interview a day after the explosion at round-two of her daughter's tournament at a different field in Beaverton.

" I'm really glad it was me, and not a small child. I could have been facing it. I'm glad it was the back of my head," she said.

Karikaye was about to leave the port-a-potty and was facing away from the toilet when the device exploded.

She was bleeding and screaming as she stumbled outside.

Her daughter, meanwhile, was still on the field.

"Someone heard a boom," said Makinsey, a high school senior from Spokane who plays third base for the Spokane Stealth softball team.

When people realized what happened, Washington County Sheriff's deputies evacuated the park and called in the bomb squad.

Investigators believe the device was a mixture of chemicals inside a plastic bottle or a similar device.

Karikaye was rushed to the hospital and received two staples in her head to stop the bleeding.

She says she hopes detectives will contact her because she got a good look at the suspect: a teenage boy who used the port-a-potty moments before she did.

"He had that look," she said, claiming she suspected he had just done something inside but never suspected he planted an explosion. "A mother's intuition. You look for a kid prank, maybe something bad on the ground. You're not thinking I'm going to get hit on the back of the head with some sort of explosion."